The Phurnacite factory in Abercwmboi killed all the trees for two miles
around. We’d measured it on the mileometer. It looked like something from the
depths of hell, black and looming with chimneys of flame, reflected in a dark
pool that killed any bird or animal that drank from it. The smell was beyond description.
We always wound up the car windows as tight as tight when we had to pass it,
and tried to hold our breath, but Grampar said nobody could hold their breath
that long, and he was right. There was sulphur in that smell, which was a hell chemical
as everyone knew, and other, worse things, hot unnameable metals and rotten
eggs.
My sister and I called it Mordor, and we’d never been there on our own
before. We were ten years old. Even so, big as we were, as soon as we got off
the bus and started looking at it we started holding hands.
It was dusk, and as
we approached the factory loomed blacker and more terrible than ever. Six of
the chimneys were alight; four belched out noxious smokes.
“Surely it is a
device of the Enemy,” I murmured.
Mor didn’t want to
play. “Do you really think this will work?”
“The fairies were
sure of it,” I said, as reassuringly as possible.
“I know, but
sometimes I don’t know how much they understand about the real world.”
“Their world is
real,” I protested. “Just in a different way. At a different angle.”
“Yes.” She was
still staring at the Phurnacite, which was getting bigger and scarier as we
approached. “But I don’t know how much they understand about the angle of the
every day world. And this is definitely in that world. The trees are dead.
There isn’t a fairy for miles.”
“That’s why we’re
here,” I said.
We came to the
wire, three straggly strands, only the top one barbed. A sign on it read “No
Unauthorised Admittance. Beware Guard Dogs.” The gate was far around the other
side, out of sight.
“Are there dogs?”
she asked. Mor was afraid of dogs, and dogs knew it. Perfectly nice dogs who
would play with me would rouse their hackles at her. My mother said it was a method
people could use to tell us apart. It would have worked, too, but typically of
her, it was both terrifyingly evil and just a little crazily impractical.
“No,” I said.
“How do you know?”
“It would ruin
everything if we go back now, after having gone to all this trouble and come
this far. Besides, it’s a quest, and you can’t give up on a quest because
you’re afraid of dogs. I don’t know what the fairies would say. Think of all the
things people on quests have to put up with.” I knew this wasn’t working. I
squinted forward into the deepening dusk as I spoke. Her grip on my hand had
tightened. “Besides, dogs are animals. Even trained guard dogs would try to
drink the water, and then they’d die. If there really were dogs, there would be
at least a few dog bodies at the side of the pool, and I don’t see any. They’re
bluffing.”
We crept below the
wire, taking turns holding it up. The still pool was like old unpolished
pewter, reflecting the chimney flames as unfaithful wavering streaks. There
were lights below them, lights the evening shift worked by.
There was no
vegetation here, not even dead trees. Cinders crunched underfoot, and clinker
and slag threatened to turn our ankles. There seemed to be nothing alive but
us. The starpoints of windows on the hill opposite seemed ridiculously out of
reach. We had a school friend who lived there, we had been to a party once, and
noticed the smell, even inside the house. Her father worked at the plant. I
wondered if he was inside now.
At the edge of the
pool we stopped. It was completely still, without even the faintest movement of
natural water. I dug in my pocket for the magic flower. “Have you got yours?”
“It’s a bit
crushed,” she said, fishing it out. I looked at them. Mine was a bit crushed
too. Never had what we were doing seemed more childish and stupid than standing
in the centre of that desolation by that dead pool holding a pair of crushed
pimpernels the fairies had told us would kill the factory.
I couldn’t think of
anything appropriate to say. “Well, un, dai, tri!” I said, and on “Three” as
always we cast the flowers forward into the leaden pool, where they vanished
without even a ripple. Nothing whatsoever happened. Then a dog barked far away,
and Mor turned and ran and I turned and pelted after her.
“Nothing happened,”
she said, when we were back on the road, having covered the distance back in
less than a quarter of the time it had taken us as distance out.
“What did you
expect?” I asked.
“The Phurnacite to
fall and become a hallowed place,” she said, in the most matter- of- fact tone
imaginable. “Well, either that or huorns.”
I hadn’t thought of
huorns, and I regretted them extremely. “I thought the flowers would dissolve
and ripples would spread out and then it would crumble to ruin and the trees
and ivy come swarming over it while we watched and the pool would become real
water and a bird would come and drink from it and then the fairies would be
there and thank us and take it for a palace.”
“But nothing at all
happened,” she said, and sighed. “We’ll have to tell them it didn’t work
tomorrow. Come on, are we going to walk home or wait for a bus?”
It had worked, though. The next day, the headline in the Aberdare Leader was “Phurnacite Plant Closing: Thousands of Jobs Lost.”
It had worked, though. The next day, the headline in the Aberdare Leader was “Phurnacite Plant Closing: Thousands of Jobs Lost.”
***
I’m telling that
part first because it’s compact and concise and it makes sense, and a lot of
the rest of this isn’t that simple.
Think of this as a memoir. Think of it as one of those memoirs that’s later discredited to everyone’s horror because the writer lied and is revealed to be a different colour, gender, class and creed from the way they’d made everybody think. I have the opposite problem. I have to keep fighting to stop making myself sound more normal. Fiction’s nice. Fiction lets you select and simplify. This isn’t a nice story, and this isn’t an easy story. But it is a story about fairies, so feel free to think of it as a fairy story. It’s not like you’d believe it anyway.
Think of this as a memoir. Think of it as one of those memoirs that’s later discredited to everyone’s horror because the writer lied and is revealed to be a different colour, gender, class and creed from the way they’d made everybody think. I have the opposite problem. I have to keep fighting to stop making myself sound more normal. Fiction’s nice. Fiction lets you select and simplify. This isn’t a nice story, and this isn’t an easy story. But it is a story about fairies, so feel free to think of it as a fairy story. It’s not like you’d believe it anyway.
______________________________________________________________
Celebrating
the paperback release of the UK edition, Corsair Books and “Among Others” are
on tour and you can find many wonderful things about Jo Walton’s novel on the
following blogs too:
Monday
18th March – The
Speculative Scotsman – “Giving the Game Away/ We are Among Others”
Tuesday
19th March – Civilian
Reader – Guest post: “Libraries and Civilization” by Jo Walton + Worldwide Giveaway
Thursday
21st March – 2606 Books
Friday
22nd March – The Book Smugglers
Saturday
23rd March – Jan Edwards
Sunday
24th March – Fantasy Faction
Monday
25th March – Curiosity Killed The Bookworm
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